


dont be afraid just look at yourself

by koritsimou



Category: IT (Movies - Muschietti), IT - Stephen King
Genre: Deadlights (IT), Fix-It, M/M, The Turtle CAN Help Us (IT)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-01
Updated: 2020-03-01
Packaged: 2021-02-27 21:20:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,012
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22972417
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/koritsimou/pseuds/koritsimou
Summary: Richie is ready to kill the apparition of his younger self, no questions asked, when he rounds on him in the heart of It's lair. The fact that young Richie gives a yelp of panicked surprise makes him pause, rock in hand.
Relationships: Eddie Kaspbrak/Richie Tozier, Minor or Background Relationship(s)
Comments: 22
Kudos: 317





	dont be afraid just look at yourself

**Author's Note:**

> With many thanks to my best friend [focusfixated](https://archiveofourown.org/users/focusfixated/) for her eyes, reactions and insights.  
> And for letting me drag her to clown town with me.

Richie is ready to kill the apparition of his younger self, no questions asked, when he rounds on him in the heart of It's lair. The fact that young Richie gives a yelp of panicked surprise makes him pause, rock in hand. Nothing they’ve seen down here has been afraid of _them_.

"Richie?!" a worried cry echoes around the chamber in response. As one, he and his younger self, without taking their eyes off each other, call "over here!" 

"Wait 'til you see this, Eddie," Richie adds, and the confusion writ across his past's face deepens.

He’s wearing the shirt Richie had on the day Bev was taken, the day they fought It: white, palm tree print. It hangs off him, baggy, the shirttails still damp from greywater. God, he was a beanpole.

Richie remembers the awkwardness of his overlong limbs. The months – years, really – of tripping over nothing while he got used to his rapidly-changing dimensions, when running was guaranteed physical comedy. The recollection is sudden but, at this point, unsurprising. Richie wonders how long this will go on, how many more little nuggets of his past there are to uncover. 

“How’d you get here?” he is asked, by himself.

Richie answers distractedly, keeping half an eye out for Eddie, or one of the other Losers. “Down the well in the basement. Same way you did.”

“Isn’t that sort of activity a bit dangerous at your age?” Richie asks him, baiting.

“Don’t worry, we’re more coordinated now,” Richie shoots back.

Young Richie crosses his lanky arms, but he’s fighting a grin Richie knows the shape and stretch of intimately.

Whilst he took seeing his younger self in his stride, Richie is utterly unprepared for the emergence of thirteen year old Eddie Kaspbrak. The iconic short shorts, fanny pack and all. He's even shorter than Richie (only recently) remembered. 

Eddie has his cast arm tucked against his chest as he runs to reach Richie. 

"Who the fuck is that? Is this It? It can't be It," little Eddie says almost faster than Richie can follow. He realises the voice he heard call his name before was definitely too high. 

"I think he's me? Seems a pretty tame nightmare though, growing up to be a schluppy asshole."

"You're already an asshole. Nah, this is obviously my nightmare: two Richies."

Richie barks a laugh. Fuck, he'd loved this kid. Meanwhile, young Richie shoves at Eddie, but Eddie pingpongs back to his side instantly, grinning. "Watch the arm, dipshit," he says, a reflex. 

"Don’t worry, it heals perfectly,” Richie says, figuring he should say something.

Eddie's smile dims, and his big bambi eyes regard Richie with suspicion. The eyes are a lot. The eyes are still a lot, Richie thinks, remembering holding Eddie’s gaze, above, as he told him he was brave. But on Little Eds, those eyes are like half of his face.

"You really were extremely cute," Richie mutters. 

"The cutest," Young Richie agrees. Eddie blocks his attempt to pinch his cheek. 

"Don't! And don't call me cute. What do you mean ‘were’?" he demands, his voice getting even higher. "Am I dead?!" 

"No, no," Richie reassures, as he watches himself grip Eddie's good hand and say, "Of course not, Eds. I wouldn't let you die."

A third voice says, " _Soon._ " Neither teen reacts to it, though it seems to echo softly around the cavern. Richie has to swallow past a sudden lump in his throat when he says, "No, I just meant-" Richie stops. Maybe it’s time to find out if he's hallucinating. "Eddie!" he yells. 

"Rich?" It's hard to tell how far away he is. Sounds travel differently in this cavernous space. 

Richie doesn't take his eyes off the kids in front of him, so he sees Eddie stand up a little straighter and Richie drop his hand to slap-slap-slap his upper arm excitedly. Eddie can't swat at him as effectively from the right, not unless he uses his cast – a move Richie remembers him being very reluctant to make; Richie earned it but twice – and Richie takes advantage. He lets Eddie shrug him off, only to throw an arm around his shoulders. 

"Little Eddie Spaghetti, all grown up. You excited, Eds?" 

"Don't call me that."

"Which one? Little? Spaghetti? Eds? Eddie?? I mean, that's your name but if you really don't want me to-" 

Richie watches as they almost fall to quickfire bickering again, that familiar easily-induced rage surfacing on Eddie's face, but then Eddie, his Eddie, rounds a shard of black rock and they fall quiet. Young Richie moves his arm from Eddie's shoulders to his chest, and pushes Eddie half behind him. 

God, how did he ever think he was hiding this? 

Eddie - as if Richie has even half a right to call him _his_ , compared to the kids in front of him, who have only stopped touching because Richie has thrust Eddie behind him - grown Eddie, adult Eddie, not-his Eddie, has pulled up short. 

"Uh, Rich?" he says slowly, hands hanging limply by his sides as he stares at their own ghosts.

"Yeah, I see them. You see them?" 

"Yeah. How?" 

"How does any of this shit happen to us?" 

"Good point," Young Richie interjects, as Eddie hazards, "Space magic?" 

A voice, neither a Richie nor an Eddie, says, "Yes." It’s slow and deep and Richie finds he wants to trust it.

Richie looks to see if Eddie hears it too, but he can't tell. Eddie's face bears the usual level of apprehension earned by this whole godforsaken day. Richie looks back to the apparitions of himself and Eddie. They haven't conveniently vanished. 

"I'd forgotten about those shorts," Eddie says, voice faint. 

"I hadn't," Richie assures, unable to help himself. 

"Shut up, Richie. Yes you did, we all did."

"Nah, Eds. Everything else, sure, but the short shorts. They were forever."

"Fuck off, Richie. I was a little kid," Eddie gestures to his past self. "You think I picked my own clothes?"

"Hey, fuck you. There's nothing wrong with my clothes." Eddie says, stepping up alongside Richie again to stab a pointed finger at his adult self. 

"I used to dream about them," Richie continues, in an airy faraway voice. "Just the tiniest little short shorts, unconnected to anything else, no context. 'What does this mean?' I'd ask my therapist."

"I wish you had a therapist," Eddie mutters, darkly. 

"This is so weird," Richie's young self says, sounding utterly delighted. 

"You never grew up at all," Young Eddie says. "You just got older."

"Isn't it great?" Young Richie says, and Richie tries not to think about how desperately wrong he is about his imagined future. "Eddie, you finally got taller. Well, sort of."

“Fuck you, Richie. I’m averag-”

“Yeah, yeah, you’re average height. In Bolivia. I remember, Eddie.”

“I wasn’t talking to you, asshole. I was talking to... well, you. But _that_ you. What the fuck is going on?”

“I think we’re hallucinating,” Richie says.

“This isn’t It?” Adult Eddie asks.

“I dunno, Eds. I don’t think so. It doesn’t feel like It. I’m not- I’m not scared of them,” Richie gestures at their younger selves.

“Yeah, why would you be afraid of yourself?” Little Eddie asks, and Richie doesn’t miss the way his young self stiffens a little beside him. “You’re grownups, we could be afraid of _you_ , but why would you be afraid of us? And you can’t be here to scare us because we killed It,” he continues, without taking a breath.

Richie watches Eddie stare at his younger self before he turns to Richie, mouth open but wordless. “Yeah, you were like that all the time, Eds.”

“Shut up.” Eddie finds his words again with his usual speed. “I had to speak that fast to get a word in around _you_ , Trashmouth. You’re right though, this doesn’t feel like It.”

It actually feels sort of nice, Richie thinks. They’ve had to recall so many bad experiences in the past 24 hours. It’s nice to have a brief moment of respite to remember that it wasn’t all a horror fest.

“So if this is a hallucination, or a dream, or whatever,” Eddie extrapolates, “whose is it?”

Four pairs of eyes dart back and forth between each other, considering.

“Hey Richie, let me touch you, see if this is real,” Richie asks kid-him. 

“Bad,” thirteen year old Richie denounces immediately. “Ew. An old man asking to touch little kids? Really? This is my bright future? Wanting little boys?”

You already want little boys. You grow up to want little men, Richie thinks, but he can’t say it, not in front of Eddie, not even in a hallucination, which he is increasingly sure he is experiencing.

“You know I don’t mean it like that, you little twerp,” he says instead.

“This is kind of cathartic, you know. Seeing you experience how fucking annoying you were,” Eddie muses, as his younger self points out, “You do know you’re just insulting yourself, Richie, right? You get that?”

“Eddie, my love, I have had to experience how fucking annoying I am every second of every day of my life. You got off lightly,” Richie assures him.

“Still funny,” Young Richie tells his own Eddie, with a shrug. Little Eddie pinches him, hard. “Ow, Eddie, what the fuck?”

“Not a dream,” Eddie says, primly.

“Not to, uh, disagree with myself. But all that tells us is this isn't his dream,” Adult Eddie points out.

Young Eddie screeches as his Richie pinches him back. "Isn't Eddie's dream either,” Richie says, smugly, as beside him Eddie winds himself up for a fresh tirade.

Richie looks imploringly at Eddie. He raises an eyebrow and resists shaping his hands into little crab claws. Eddie still narrows his eyes. “If you fucking touch me, Richie, I swear to God-”

“What? It was your hypothesis,” Richie says. Hands open in front of him, his innocent act roundly ignored.

“It was not. It was _your_ stupid hypothesis. I just poked some holes in it. You want me to pinch you, huh?”

“That and so much more, Eds. But not in front of the children,” Richie says, as Eddie blusters. He wonders if both could be set off at once. Would the cavern be able to withstand the explosive power of two simultaneous Eddie Kaspbrak rages? “Besides, I know this isn’t my dream.”

“Oh yeah? How can you be sure? How can we be sure of anything down here?”

“If this was my dream, you’d be in short shorts too.”

Eddie’s face gets extremely pinched. Way more pinched than his usual, baseline irritation, pinched.

“Hey, Eddie, you still do the face,” Young Richie interrupts his Eddie’s extremely emphatic lecture to point out.

“What the fuck are you _talking_ about Richie? I don’t make that face. I’ve never made that face in my life,” Eddie rants, making the very same face.

Young Richie doesn’t bother disagreeing. He grins like his life is complete, and when he catches Richie’s eye, he winks. Richie can’t help but grin back at him.

The sounds of splashing grabs all of their attention. Young Richie pulls Eddie towards him, again, and Eddie lets him. Adult Eddie backs up closer to Richie, facing into the gloom he himself emerged from, where the noise of many pairs of feet is shaping itself.

From opposite corners of the darkened edges of the visible cave, nine Losers appear. 

They don’t magically file out in matching lineups, like Richie feels they should. Bev is first out of the dark, her face grim. Her expression relaxes as she sees Eddie and Richie and she glances back, to where Ben is on her heels, seemingly before noticing their teenaged company.

“You guys, okay?” Ben asks, as Big Bill leads Stan and Beverly out to join little Eddie and Richie. Beverly’s pale dress is damp and dirty while Stan’s shirt looks as neat as ever. A long piece of piping hangs limply in Bill’s hand.

“Peachy,” Richie says. “Just been reminiscing.”

Bill emerges from the dark behind Ben, with Mike’s hand resting on his shoulder as he follows him. Richie looks from the sadly complete adult contingent to Young Stan, his eyes and throat hot. He barely notices Ben and Mike join Bev. A sudden glint of metal tears his gaze from Stanley. The key around Beverly’s neck catches the light as she looks from one adult to the next, eyes increasingly wide.

“Losers,” Richie says, gesturing broadly. His voice is a little gruff as he forces mirth. “Meet the Losers.”

Eyes meet matching eyes with variable expressions of confusion, suspicion, surprise and disbelief. Young Bill, unable to catch his own gaze, looks at Stan. Stan looks much as he always did, tired but unsurprised.

“What is going on?” Bill asks. Bev, Ben, and Mike all still seem a little transfixed by their past selves but Bill is looking resolutely at Richie.

“Eh-Eddie?” Young Bill glances from Stan, to the adults, to Eddie and Richie.

“It’s Richie’s fault,” Eddie says quickly.

“What? How is this my fault?” Young Richie argues.

“That does seem unfair,” Richie defends his younger counterpart and himself.

Little Eddie gestures to Richie with his cast arm and claims, “You started it. You and... old you.”

“You did technically start it,” Adult Eddie agrees, looking at Richie too.

“Eds, come on. We literally _just_ established that I don’t know what’s going on.” Richie frowns, crossing his arms. Two Eddies was pretty funny until they started ganging up on him. “It’s a collective hallucination,” he adds, to the rest of the Losers. “I think.”

“Old Richie?” Mikey echoes, thoughtful. And Richie watches his steady gaze trickle from Richie, down the line of the adult Losers. “They’re us. Grown up.”

“Yup,” Mike tells himself. “You’re looking at your future.”

“Question is, why are we looking at our past?” Ben asks.

“Isn’t that all we’ve d-d-done for the past two days?” Bill points out, and Richie watches Young Bill’s face fall a little.

“The real question is has everyone noticed Little Eddie’s high socks and short shorts combo?” Bev asks.

“THANK you,” Richie crows.

Eddie turns to Bev, betrayed, but little Eddie- little Eddie goes off.

“I am not little!” he explodes. “I am a perfectly normal height and weight for my age. You guys know how fucking often I have check ups, you think I wouldn't know if I was small for my age? I'm not little, you guys are all just freakishly large.”

The silence that follows is complete enough that Richie can hear the plink plink plink of water from the craggy ceiling meeting the ground.

“I’d forgotten how obnoxious Eddie was,” Bev says after a moment, and Richie cracks up.

“Hey!” their Eddie objects.

“I'M NOT OBNOXIOUS,” Young Eddie spits. “You're obnoxious! Fuck you. Being right is not the same as being obnoxious. Richie is wrong about everything constantly, _that's_ obnoxious.”

Eddie's eyes are comically wide when he turns to Bev and Richie just catches his, "Okay, maybe a little." 

Bev grins. To young Eddie she adds, "Don't worry, _no one_ forgot how obnoxious Richie was." 

Richie frowns, while his younger self looks delighted. "Yes!" he cheers, holding a hand up to Richie for a high five. Richie grabs his wrist and pushes his hand down, remembering the feeling of Stan and Bill's hands encircling his skinny wrist, doing the same. Eddie had tended to just jab him in the side instead. "Not a good thing, man." 

“What do you mean forgot?” Stan asks, and a hush falls again. No one’s gonna want to field this one, Richie thinks. Even looking at Stan is painful.

“We didn’t stay friends, did we.” Stan says. It isn’t a question and his tone makes Richie ache. Like Mikey, he scans the line of adults until he finds Bill. “I told you,” Stan says, looking straight at him. “Grown ups don’t have friends from middle school.”

“I’m s-s-sorry, Stan,” Bill stutters, and it’s too much. Bill carries enough guilt already. He always did.

“We’re all sorry, Stan,” Richie says.

Young Bill - and looking at him now it baffles Richie that they called him Big Bill, they all look so little, not just Eds, and Bill wasn’t even the tallest then, and Richie himself had caught him up by fourteen, but he just _was_ , he was Big Bill, he was their leader. And it’s Big Bill now who looks across all the adult Losers, then looks himself in the eye and asks.

“W-Where's Stan?”

“Where's Ben?” Young Richie asks, after him, and Richie has never wanted himself to shut up more than he wants his thirteen year old apparition self to shut up right now. But maybe it’s a blessing, Richie thinks as he watches Ben give kid Richie a wave. How are they supposed to tell Stan what he did. What he will do. Beverly already knows, Richie muses, as more than one pair of eyes widens at Ben’s identification, and no one’s as much as Ben’s own. Young Richie’s mouth falls open. It fucking sucks that Bev never got to forget what she saw in the deadlights, that she had to live with those visions all these years. But thank god she remembered enough to urge Mike to call Stan back that night.

"Woah," Young Richie says, once he closes his mouth. "You got-”

“T-t-tall,” Bill says.

“Skinny,” Ben says.

“- hot," Richie croaks.

Richie tries to avoid looking at anyone as his young self parrots his own reaction to Benny Boy all grown up. But he can’t help it, he looks at Eddie, catches him frowning at young Richie.

Little Eddie is also frowning, but kind of at everyone, rather than Richie specifically. “Where’s Stan?” he repeats.

“I didn’t come,” Stan says, matter-of-fact.

“I’m sorry, Stan,” Mike says this time.

“You’re okay, Stan. You’re gonna be okay,” Beverly says, tears in her eyes. Ben reaches a hand out, resting it on her shoulder. Beverley grabs it without looking away from Stan and holds on.

“He’s gonna be okay,” Richie adds, looking at young Bev. She startles a little, nods, and adult Bev glances at Richie with a tight smile. “You saved him,” Richie tells her, both of her. _It’s your turn_ , a voice tells him.

“You did what you thought you had to,” Ben tells Stan. “We’re all just doing what we have to, to end this.”

“To end It,” Bill says, firm.

“But we killed It,” Little Eddie insists.

“Nah, sorry, kid. It dragged itself off to lick It’s wounds and now It’s back,” Eddie informs himself.

Young Richie throws his hands into the air. "So what, it fucking hibernated for what, a hundred years? How old are you?" 

There is a chorus of cries from the adult Losers. Bev utters a sharp "Hey!"; "Wow," Ben says, laughing with the easy comfort of someone who looks like he does; "F-fuck you," Bill says, unable to stop himself from pushing his greying hair back from his face. 

"Beep beep, Richie!" Eddie suggests, but he sounds like - Richie checks, he is - he's smiling. 

"Nah, that's fair," Richie excuses himself. "I feel about a hundred years old right now."

"It does make you feel old," Mike agrees from the opposite end of their group, where he regards the past Losers. 

"Uh, Mikey, any idea what's going on?" Richie asks.

"Why would I-" Young Mike starts.

"Not especially. But you guys had to get your memories back before we could do this. Maybe there was something else you had to remember.”

 _Keep him close_ , Richie hears.

“Mike, are you just bullshitting us again?” Eddie asks. He hasn’t moved away from Richie, since he backed away from the ominous footsteps of the rest of the Losers.

“I think he might be onto something,” Richie says, glancing back to his young self.

Richie and Eddie are the only members of the 1989 Losers Club in the same order as the adults. Richie watches himself throw an arm around Eddie’s neck, dropping his head to whisper something to him. He watches Eddie frown, watches him try not to laugh.

And then he watches nothing.

The darkness closes around him. Darker than closed eyes in a dark room. Black folding precisely around him, like an insect closing its wings. 

Then light bursts, searing across his brain and vision as pain cracks up his back, his head, his shoulders. He opens his eyes and Eddie blearily resolves in front of him. He's leaning over Richie, who is lying on the wet ground aching all over.

Eddie is speaking, Richie can see his mouth moving. But Richie hears another voice, again, fainter than before. It says, " _Now._ "

Richie’s arms feel like dead weights, but he throws them around Eddie and pulls him close, shifting his body to roll them over, so Richie is between him and the danger, a forgotten instinct remembered.

It’s just enough. 

It’s huge clawed arm strikes out, barely catching on the edge of Richie’s shoulder. It tears through his jacket, his shirt, his t-shirt, his skin. But Eddie is safe, body blanketed entirely by Richie’s, his big eyes round with shock.

“Holy shit, Richie. That was close.”

It was close. It was way too close, and if Richie stops to think about it he’ll be lost. He ignores the singing pain of his wound, ignores the feeling of Eddie under him, and pushes himself up.

“Come on, we gotta move.” Richie pulls Eddie to his feet, hissing when it tugs at his ruined shoulder.

“Fuck, It got you,” Eddie says. “You’re bleeding.”

Richie doesn’t let go of his hand. _Keep him close._ He might never let go of him again. “‘Tis but a scratch,” he says. “Come on.”

“I’m sorry, Rich,” Eddie is saying, as Richie pulls him to the relative safety of the nearest cavern. “I thought It was dead. I thought we’d- I’d killed It.” 

“So you keep saying,” Richie murmurs.

“What?”

“Nothing. Come here,” Richie says, as they stop in the mouth of a small tunnel, its walls wet and close

Eddie looks at Richie confused, as Richie keeps pulling him closer, but he lets Richie hug him, lets Richie tuck him under his chin, lets him press his nose to Eddie’s hair. Slowly, Eddie lifts his arms, wrapping them around Richie’s broad back. Eddie breathes against his chest, and Richie indulges in the feeling of having Eddie in his arms for as long as he dares.

When Richie reluctantly lets him go, the fingers of Eddie’s left hand come away wet and dark.

Eddie stares at them and Richie waits for disgust or alarm, but Eddie just wipes them quickly on his own pants before lifting his hand to Richie again. He makes to turn Richie around, but Richie catches his wrists.

There’s a faraway sound of rock cracking and Richie spares a quick glance out of the tunnel. He can’t let Eddie get distracted looking out for him again. “Let me look at your back,” Eddie huffs, tugging halfheartedly at Richie’s hold.

“You can look at it when we get out of here,” Richie promises.

“If we don’t do something about it you might not make it out of here,” Eddie argues. 

“We’re getting out of here, Eds. We are. And when we do...” Richie isn’t ready. He doesn’t think he’s gonna bleed out, but what the fuck does he know, he’s not a doctor. The mess of flesh that is his right shoulder could be really serious, and he’s still not ready. But he’ll make himself be, when they get out of here. He’s lost so much time already.

“...you'll let me look at it?” Eddie asks, when it becomes clear Richie isn’t going to finish his own sentence.

“I’ll let you do whatever you want,” Richie says. And it isn’t everything, not even nearly, but it’s still a truth. 

Eddie frowns, the same little pinched line forming between his brows that Richie had imagined rubbing his thumb over a hundred times. His eyes search Richie’s face in the gloom and Richie... Richie lets him look.

“What if I don’t know what I want,” Eddie says, still frowning.

“I’ll wait for you to figure it out,” Richie says, because it doesn’t matter, he realises. It doesn’t matter what Eddie wants, so long as Eddie lets Richie stick around for whatever that is.

Eddie tugs more forcefully and Richie startles, letting go. He’d forgotten he was still holding Eddie’s wrists.

As soon as his hands are free, Eddie is lifting them to Richie again. He doesn’t try to move him. He rests one hand on Richie’s chest and cups his face with the other. Richie doesn’t move a muscle.

Eddie runs his thumb across Richie’s cheek, along the edge of his glasses, and Richie sucks in a surprised little breath.

“Maybe you can help me figure it out,” Eddie says, tightening the hand on Richie’s chest until he has a fistful of his shirt that he can use to pull Richie down. Richie goes gladly, his hands find Eddie’s waist as Eddie pushes himself up into Richie’s space and presses their mouths together.

Eddie is firm and sure and kissing Richie. It startles the flock of tiny birds that apparently live under Richie’s skin; they swoop and wheel in his stomach, his pulse flutters in time with their wings. 

Richie doesn’t let his surprise stall him. To allow Eddie to consider for even a fraction of a moment that Richie doesn’t want this would be unforgivable. Richie uses his grip on Eddie’s waist to pull him closer and kisses him back. Eddie’s hand flexes on Richie’s chest as he takes a stumbling step closer. His mouth slips from Richie’s, glances his chin, then it’s back. Eddie turns Richie’s head, directing him with the hand still on his face, and slants their mouths back together. A shiver runs down Richie’s back, starting at the edge of his neck where Eddie’s pinky presses into his skin.

Richie always thought himself indifferent to kissing. An inoffensive prelude to the main event. He’s been with men who were actively opposed, who seemed to think fucking Richie didn’t really make them gay so long as they weren’t kissing him. And he didn’t mind, he didn’t miss it. Richie isn’t thinking about any of this. He will, later, because kissing someone has never felt like this. Kissing Eddie is like an entirely new experience. Comparison is impossible and the attempt unfair. It would be like trying to compare flick football to the NFL. 

There is a tongue that doesn’t quite get the chance to tease the edge of Richie’s lips, because it’s Eddie’s, and Richie’s mouth opens for him at once. Richie Tozier has always eagerly kept pace with Eddie Kaspbrak, and this, sharing breaths and tasting each other’s want, is no different.

Richie’s mouth has begged attention from Eddie for years, and finally has it. Richie feels like a tiny fractious part of himself has finally settled. Another thousand parts of him, however, are newly frantic. Eddie’s thumb rubs a tiny circle under Richie’s eye and the number doubles.

“Richie!” a voice from outside calls. Richie ignores it.

When a second voice joins it and a third yells “Eddie!” Eddie pulls back, with a frankly adorable little huff.

“Over here!” he yells over his shoulder. But he turns straight back to stare at Richie. It’s too dark for Richie to read anything in those big dark eyes.

They’re standing in a damp cave, thousands of feet underground, with a demonic space spider-clown out for their blood, Richie remembers. It doesn’t feel nearly as pressing as the fact that Eddie’s hand is still caressing his face. 

Richie should say something, but he’s acutely terrified that anything he says could be the wrong thing. Eddie already looks a little mad- no, wait. Eddie looks embarrassed. That’s so much better, that’s good, that’s easy.

Richie stops thinking and turns his face into Eddie’s hand, presses a soft kiss to his palm. The hand on his chest twitches. 

When Richie turns back to check Eddie’s expression, Eddie has closed his eyes. The little crease between his brows is back, but it disappears when he opens his eyes, meet’s Richie’s, and says, “I think I know what I want.”

Richie’s stomach drops to his feet, but he manages to say, “Is it to kill this fucking clown and get the hell out of here?”

Eddie smiles a small smile, like Richie is mildly amusing, and like they’re not still in immediate danger of death. “That’s definitely item one, yeah.”

“Oh, you got a list now, Kaspbrak. What else is on it?” Richie asks. And it’s easy, it’s like nothing has changed.

Eddie lets his hand slip from Richie’s face to his neck, scraping stubble. He drags it down Richie’s chest until it meets its twin and Richie feels abruptly on fire. Okay, maybe not like nothing has changed.

“I’ll tell you after I’ve looked at your shoulder,” Eddie bargains and Richie grins.

The others crash into their small tunnel, Bev and Ben first, Bill and Mike just behind them. Richie drops his hands from Eddie’s waist, but Eddie doesn’t move away – an instinct Richie himself has to fight. Eddie turns towards the others. Richie should feel a lurch of deja vu, the visual of them emerging from the dark is so familiar, but this time they’re all yelling as they appear, thanking god, reassuring themselves Richie and Eddie are okay, explaining they saw the claw strike out, but couldn’t see where it landed from where they’d been in the cave.

Richie listens, but doesn’t hear any of it. Eddie is saying something about the leper and Mike looks excited and Richie’s shoulder is screaming. But Richie can still feel the ghost of Eddie’s lips against his, can still hear him saying, “I think I know what I want”, can remember Eddie backing up alongside him and ping-ponging back to Richie’s side.

 _Keep him close_ , something had said. 

_I will_ , Richie promises.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you so much for reading! This is my first finished piece of fic for this fandom, which sunk its teeth into me a few months ago and isn't letting go. I really liked the scene in itch2 where Bill got to confront his past self. And I thought, why just him. And that thought became this.  
> I have been so looking forward to finally contributing to this warm, exciting fandom that I've found so welcoming.  
> I'm [@koritsisou](https://twitter.com/koritsisou) on twitter and [asongbirdandanoldhat](https://asongbirdandanoldhat.tumblr.com) on tumblr. Please do come yell at/with me about these characters. I love them so much.


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